Some time in mid October, 2002 in a chat room far far away, a number of booksellers got a bit tired of always having to deal with the big massive book listing sites and wondered if it was possible to have things a different way.

The result is a website that to the best of its ability will feature independent internet booksellers who only have links to other independent internet booksellers and the Global Book Town site itself. Many of the existing member stores list on one or more of the book listing databases separately from their membership in GBT, but none of them directly link back to any of the major listing sites from their connection to GBT.

Our home page brings back memories for some people when it suggests “Have you ever walked through a bookshop neighborhood, dropping in at one store after another looking for that special book? We have recreated that atmosphere here by bringing together bookstores from around the world for your shopping enjoyment. Many of the stores have special offers that you will not find anywhere else. Feel free to peek in at one or more of the bookstores listed here. Each has its own specialty, and they all have an assortment of interesting and wonderful books just waiting for a good home.”

We opened the Global Book Town website in mid December 2002 at http:// www.globalbooktown.com and already have 22 stores listed. Our short-range goals include a specialties / category list, feature bookstore pages, book reviews, and most anything else that someone is willing to add to the picture.

Membership to this point is voluntary and without any dues requirement. All expenses to date have been covered by the founding members of the group and all website work is being done on a voluntary basis by a few of the members.

Access to the discussion room does not require that you be an ezboard supporter, just that you have a user id. If you don’t already have one we suggest that you obtain a ‘global’ user id instead of just a local one as there are a number of other discussion boards related to books within the ezboard system and a global id lets you access all of them.

Our graphic for the site was kindly painted by the daughter of one of the founding members and as such is copyrighted by her, Elizabeth Kern.

We hope and expect to have 200 stores or better listed by the end of 2003 and feel that this will create a very good venue for booksellers with freestanding websites to join and a good site for them to promote in order to retain their independence from any listing site.